Venezuela steps up surveillance near T&T

RAPHAEL JOHN-LALL

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Venezuela’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus has in­creased its pres­ence in ar­eas in the east­ern end of the coun­try that face Trinidad and To­ba­go and oth­er Caribbean na­tions, ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports there.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as Venezuela’s For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Yván Gil, ex­pressed the South Amer­i­can coun­try’s con­cerns re­gard­ing the US mil­i­tary pres­ence in the re­gion dur­ing a meet­ing with of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed Na­tions.

On Thurs­day, Gil held a meet­ing with Gi­an­lu­ca Ram­pol­la, the Unit­ed Na­tions’ res­i­dent co­or­di­na­tor in the coun­try.

“We stress the ur­gency for the Unit­ed Na­tions sys­tem to adopt a firm stance in de­fence of our Latin Amer­i­can re­gion as a Zone of Peace, and for all states to re­spect the Char­ter of the Unit­ed Na­tions,” he em­pha­sised in a state­ment on his In­sta­gram page.

The meet­ing, he added, aimed to strength­en “our co­op­er­a­tion, based on re­spect for sov­er­eign­ty and the lead­er­ship of the or­gan­ised Venezue­lan peo­ple.”

This comes as there could be a new phase in the US war on drugs.

On Thurs­day, US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed that the Unit­ed States is prepar­ing to take new ac­tion against al­leged drug traf­fick­ing net­works in Venezuela, telling ser­vice mem­bers dur­ing a Thanks­giv­ing call that ef­forts for strikes on land will be start­ing “very soon.”

Giv­en Pres­i­dent Trump’s lat­est pro­nounce­ments and the height­ened ac­tiv­i­ty of the US mil­i­tary in T&T, Venezuela’s se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus has set up an in­creased pres­ence in east­ern Venezuela, which faces T&T and the Caribbean, ac­cord­ing to re­ports com­ing out of the coun­try.

Fol­low­ing the bomb­ings car­ried out by the Unit­ed States against al­leged drug-laden ves­sels near its coasts, the Venezue­lan state of Su­cre has ex­pe­ri­enced weeks of ten­sion and in­ten­si­fied sur­veil­lance.

Venezue­lan news­pa­per El Na­cional quot­ed from a Reuters re­port yes­ter­day, which not­ed that the Venezue­lan town of Güiria’s lo­cal econ­o­my, which, be­yond al­leged drug traf­fick­ing, is al­so part­ly sus­tained by in­for­mal trade in food and oth­er goods with T&T, is show­ing signs of stag­na­tion.

“No boats of any kind are leav­ing for Trinidad and To­ba­go any­more — not mi­grants, not peo­ple buy­ing goods there to sell here, and cer­tain­ly not those tak­ing Venezue­lan prod­ucts to sell there, which was an­oth­er way to make mon­ey. Every­thing is prac­ti­cal­ly dead,” an un­named res­i­dent said.

The height­ened pa­trols, which lo­cals said in­creased af­ter the an­nounce­ment of joint mil­i­tary ex­er­cis­es be­tween the Unit­ed States and T&T in late Oc­to­ber, have led to ar­rests, said two of the res­i­dents.

El Na­cional’s re­port al­so said that in many cas­es, Venezue­lan mil­i­tary and in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cials dri­ve un­marked sedans and SU­Vs, which res­i­dents de­scribe as cre­at­ing an at­mos­phere of con­stant sur­veil­lance.

In oth­ers, uni­formed of­fi­cers con­duct night­time pa­trols along­side civil­ian mo­tor­cy­cle groups linked to the rul­ing So­cial­ist Par­ty.